Congress’ failure to avoid sweeping budget cuts known as the sequester – viewed nearly universally as bad policy – is one more reason for voters to lose faith in leaders who have made a habit of escalating controversies into crises.

But at the same time, voters can be said to be getting what they’ve asked for.

“The members in Congress are doing exactly what the voters are telling them to do. They’re saying `cut the budget. But don’t cut anything but foreign aid,” Claremont McKenna political scientist Jack Pitney said Friday.

Pitney cited a recent Pew Research poll showing 48 percent of Americans – the highest percentage among 19 policy areas – would support cutting foreign aid, which accounts for about 1 percent of federal spending.

Only 10 percent of Americans favored cuts to Social Security while 15 percent and 24 percent of Americans are OK with cuts to Medicare or the military, respectively.

“Eventually, Congress is going to have to deal with the entitlements, Social Security and Medicare. That’s where the money is. There are intelligent ways to cut entitlement spending without hurting the poor elderly,” said Pitney, who added that those cuts would be politically challenging.

The budget cuts involve $85 billion for fiscal 2013. The deadline to avoid them was midnight Friday. If nothing changes, the cuts would climb to $1.2 trillion over 10 years.

The cuts were enacted in 2011 even though politicians said they did not intend that they actually be made. The idea, as widely understood, was that holding bad policy over the heads of lawmakers would force them to come up with a sensible policy by this year.

That didn’t happen. So how much can the public trust Congress at this point?

“The short and simple answer to your question is, they can’t,” said USC political analyst Shirley Bebitch Jeffe.

Congress has a 15 percent approval rating, according to the Gallup Poll. President Barack Obama, who signed the law authorizing the budget cuts he now condemns, has a 51 percent approval rating.

“The president is doing OK, in terms of approval rating, but Congress is taking it in the ear,” Jeffe said.

A political environment in which Americans are held in suspense about taxes or government spending is far from an ideal one for business investments.

“From the point of view of business, as well as consumers, there has been an air of uncertainty about economic policy for some time,” said Robert Kleinhenz, chief economist for the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp. “I think that slowed the pace of recovery in the economy.”

“Let’s be clear: None of this is necessary,” Obama told reporters at the White House. “It’s happening because of a choice that Republicans in Congress have made. We shouldn’t be making a series of dumb, arbitrary cuts to things.”

The president met for less than an hour Friday morning with House Speaker John Boehner, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell and House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi.

Boehner’s office said he and McConnell told Obama they’re willing to close tax loopholes but only to lower taxes overall, not to replace spending cuts.

“The president got his tax hikes on January 1st,” Boehner said bluntly after the meeting with Obama. “The discussion about revenue in my view is over. It’s about taking on the spending problem here in Washington.”

If these kinds of remarks sound familiar, they echo the arguments the White House and congressional Republicans have had with each other the past few years.

In the summer of 2011, when it was uncertain whether Congress would allow the federal government to default on debt payments, Republicans and Democrats reached a last-minute agreement to raise the debt ceiling.

That not only set the stage for Standard and Poor’s to lower the country’s credit rating for the first time in history, but also the “fiscal cliff” – a blend of tax hikes and budget cuts that were set to go into effect Jan. 1.

Congress missed the deadline on both taxes and spending. The deal on taxes, which maintain the so-called “Bush tax cuts” while allowing payroll taxes to revert to higher levels, did not come until New Year’s Day itself.

Congress then gave itself more time to find a way to avoid the spending cuts no one wanted, but no deal with in sight on Friday night.

Both parties are blaming each other for the gridlock, but Raphael Sonenshein, director of the Edmund G. “Pat” Brown Institute of Public Affairs at Cal State Los Angeles, blamed the GOP for a “continued, manufactured crisis” stemming from an unwillingness to negotiate as House Republicans try “to stay relevant after an election in which they get shellacked.”

And there are even more opportunities for brinkmanship.

Congress and Obama have a March 27 deadline to avoid a government shutdown, when a six-month stopgap funding bill expires. The GOP-led House plans next week to approve a plan that would include new line-by-line budgets for the Pentagon and the Veterans Affairs Department while keeping domestic agencies frozen at last year’s levels.

Senate Democrats would like to incorporate more detailed spending bills for domestic programs but may face opposition from Republicans wary of concocting a foot-tall “omnibus” spending bill.

The president is scheduled to reveal his budget plan in mid- to late March. If he follows past practice, Obama’s budget will take few, if any, political risks.

There is plenty of opportunity of blame to go around, but analysts said a key reason members of Congress won’t make a deal is due to the simple fact that they are elected by voters in their districts, and not the nation as a whole.

That means historically low approval ratings for Congress aren’t likely to faze members in gerrymandered districts where they are more likely to worry about threats from the right or left wings of their own party if they seem too weak and are willing to compromise.

“The problem is that if every elected official only responds to the interest of their constituents, without looking for opportunities for compromise or cooperation, nothing will ever get done,” said Dan Schnur, executive director at the Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics at USC.

Andrew Edwards is part of the Southern California News Group's business team and focuses on housing stories for the Inland Empire. He's based at the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin and has also worked for publications including the Long Beach Press-Telegram and The San Bernardino Sun. He graduated from UCLA in 2003 after studying political science and history.